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Comment by dontnotice | Hacker News Reader

Common origin does not disprove animosity or self interest.

One wonders what NewsCorp or Oracle concerns are in ecommerce search, but then you remember that they had well publicized scuffles with Google.

The last record fine was against a US company, as were recent tax related fines, patterns are harder to refute.

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"patterns are harder to refute" -> there is also a pattern, how big US tech companies avoid tax payments in EU, it even has a name ("double irish sandwich")

Which is legal. The Apple case was about "illegal state aid" of all things.

So either EU is grossly incompetent to stop such thing at EU members level or they just think acting against individual companies will generate more fireworks and public support.

It's more that the EU doesn't have the political will to do what is perceived as the common good here.

Ireland has a selfish interest in attracting tech companies, and the rest of the EU can't bring enough political leverage against them to change the legal structures that make Ireland preferable for headquartering.

No political will? What about the EC's order for Apple to pay 13B € in unpaid taxes?

Ordering an US corporation to do something is entirely different from making a member state change their laws.

Equally Luxemburg is another EU location abused by corporations for TAX reasons. Ironically it was set up By a Mr Junker ages ago, who then went on to run the EU and has made much rhetoric about TAX avoidance and yet managed to do nothing to fix, in-part a situation he created. Which given his knowledge and experience in the matter, you would of thought he was ideally placed to fix now. He has not alas.

...and as a result a hefty fine under an unrelated law should be levied? Europe is and should be a place where laws are more than just tools with which to punish disfavored parties. If the double Irish should be illegal, then make it so, and hold on tighter to the straight and narrow path.

Double Irish is treated illegal as "illegal state aid". Would it be legal in US, if Delaware decided to give some foreign company (registered in Delaware) only 0,1% tax on everything they earn in the US? I thing the federal court would rule such "state aid" as illegal...

Can you show how you have established that there is a pattern? I was actually looking for a list of all the entities fined by the EU Commission. Seems like you have some data.

I'm sure EU court have based its decision on a number of different factors.

The letter from Oracle is just one of them.

Court? the problem is that these fines don't go through any court.

So just like FCC decisions in the US then.

The FCC isn't the right equivalent here, the FTC or the DoJ are, and they have to successfully sue in federal court for their fines to stick.

The fines are applied by the Commission, but the companies can appeal to the EU's general court and then to the CJEU.

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